Supplements to Member Lectures
GA 246 — 12 January 1912, St. Gallen
48. Faith, Love and Hope
My dear friends!
Theosophy is something that can bring us insights that every human being needs and that every human being who does not have them lacks. One can say that Theosophy is not yet widespread, and one can raise the question of whether people in our time, even if they hate Theosophy, still need it. What is the benefit of Theosophy? You can know things through Theosophy that you wouldn't otherwise know. The materialist will say: You don't need to know them either. - You can also ask the opposite question! Is it not possible to know anything at all about Theosophy?
Man is a complicated being. Let us consider the four bodies of man: the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body and the ego. It is not true that we know nothing about the four bodies. Because the name is foreign to him, man believes he knows nothing of the etheric body and the astral body. But man becomes aware of them, and this can even become his misfortune.
Theosophy speaks of the supersensible world. People today no longer want to believe, only to know. Yes, can man tolerate that all faith is robbed from him by a supersensible world and that he should now only know? This question can be answered on the basis of observation. This only goes on for a certain time without all belief in a supersensible world; then man has to come to terms with himself. The person who can no longer believe anything, if he then has moments when he has to consult with himself, then a despair born of a terrible feeling of loneliness comes over him. The person who can believe has something in lonely moments. The time is only just beginning when people will become more and more addicted to this feeling of loneliness and will be overcome by deep despair and darkness. And people will then find themselves more and more in a state where they don't know what to do with themselves and the world. Where does this come from?
Man is [not] merely the bearer of the intellect, which only wants to know. If he were only that, then man would only be an ego. But beneath this ego is the astral body, and it needs strength so that it does not dry up. Despair is only there where the astral body dries up. The ego can believe that it can do without the supersensible world, but in the depths below, there is the astral body, and it can never exist without faith - it dries out. It is the body of faith. In the astral body are the forces that need faith. Despair, hunger of the astral body for supersensible knowledge will afflict people. This is terrible because without an insight into the spiritual world one does not know this. You can feel the expression of it, the sickness. People will then learn to experience the hunger of the astral body. To ignite the food of the astral body is precisely the entry into the supersensible world. The astral body is hungry - like the physical body, which receives no nourishment. The forces of faith are the most important forces of the astral body. People develop their astral body, i.e. they develop the forces that make them strong.
The etheric body: People can feel and observe their etheric body. We can say that there are people who are predisposed to like other people, to love other people. Then again, there are people who cannot radiate their love outwards. These are people who only love themselves. The power of love is to a certain extent connected to the power of the living.
Example: When a person has compassion for a wild animal that is wounded, or for a person who is wounded, and then feels that the being is the same as in him. - Compassion only makes sense if we assume that a being has an inner life. Compassion is a form of love that recognizes that what lives in us also lives in other beings. For those who have developed this love weakly, it may work for a while, but without love it will not work in the long term. People must have love for their fellow human beings. A person without love, without warmth, without compassion, grows cold inside. This is a state that is even worse than despair, the inward barrenness, which passes over into the physical. The person takes on a morbid, pale appearance and feels that his outward strength is declining. It is then like a medicine for him to give him love, then things will change with him. Love has an effect on others and on us as warmth on the etheric body. The etheric body is the body of love, because the most important forces that the etheric body needs are the forces of love and compassion, which help it. We have to imagine a body shaped like a human being, but consisting only of the forces of love, then we have imagined the etheric body correctly. Love in the world proves the existence of the etheric body. The plant is built up by the same force that man feels within himself as love. This force builds up physically what it builds up spiritually in the human being.
Physical body: “Physicality is the end of the ways of God.” It has so far been created from the upper worlds of the divine-spiritual powers up to the physical image of the Godhead, in which man expresses the spirit - for God is spirit. And corporeality denies the goal of the Godhead. To realize that man is placed in corporeality, quite imperfectly, is what one can do from birth to death in order to approach it. But the fact that man feels this also reveals the urge for perfection.
The body crumbles to dust. It had to be imperfect on the one hand, otherwise man cannot attain the realization that when the physical body crumbles to dust, the soul then begins to build a new body on which he can repair what he has lacked.
The hope is to build up the physical body again and again, so that what cannot be done in one life can be done well in many lives. We imbue ourselves with the power of hope if we want to build a new body again and again. In the end, we will come to a true image of God.
We would not develop our full strength and activity in this life if we were only to build up to decay. Supersensibly, our physical body needs the feeling of hope that it can always be rebuilt. Now there are still powers without human merit. But if we then no longer want to know anything about the thought of hope, then the human [physical body] withers away. The fact is that the astral body dries up without faith, the etheric body grows cold without love, the physical body would dry up without hope.
Man will only be healthy in the future if he can hope. Only then will he approach the coming age with the right feelings. Man can try this out on himself if he devotes himself to thoughts of [the continuity of the soul from life to life] an hour or an hour and a half after getting up. Then he will feel something that flows through him like a second person. Forces of hope emanate from this into the physical body. Powers of hope are supersensibly based on the physical body.
The fact is that this physical body is built up by forces of hope - these forces used to be there and were strongest between death and new birth. Just as salt in water forms itself into crystal, so these forces are added to man. Man will be weak in life if he has developed few forces of hope in the previous life, strong if he has developed many. He will have a weak constitution in a later life. Strong materialists in one incarnation will be almost paralyzed in the next. The experience of these facts is the pastoral care of Theosophy.
The physical body is a body of hope. Man needs faith, love and hope to live. He has emerged from worldly wisdom and needs faith, love and hope to live.
If the human being does not want to give in to these facts, then he can experience it in such a way in the next incarnation. - Man has inherited a certain amount of faith, love and hope. When the interest and the capital have been used up, new capital must be created; that is why there is an urgent need for man today to find new sources of faith, love and hope, and that is what Theosophy is supposed to give us.
Man is changing in his development, and his powers are also changing. A new ability will appear in him in the next, the third millennium: we will turn our gaze away from what we have done - inwardly turn our gaze away and reflect - then man will see what happens later through what he has just done. He sees the karmic balance of the deed he has just done. The ability to see karmically will be a human ability in the future. “Change the state of mind ...” also applies to our age today. “Change the mind”, for very soon you will have to see the Christ in the spiritual worlds with immense pain in his features, full of compassion and love.
Man will feel lonely if he does not develop faith, love and hope. The Christ will be a friend to people from the supersensible world, with immense pain in his features, full of compassion and love, that is how he will show himself.
Those who have learned to believe in the supersensible world will be granted the power of the spiritual world to see the Christ, ethereally as a figure of love.
Great transformations will take place in the world in the twentieth century. Christ will balance the karma of people, of humanity, as it has been given to him. First, man on earth will have to learn about it and receive the preparation for it here on earth, that Christ has become the Lord of karma. Where [Christ] will be needed, he will be able to be almost at the same time - now, without separation of nation, of race and color, for all men, so now at the spiritual Second Coming the Christ will be there.